50% said no. I think this is naive. We've had this discussion on HN before. Companies pay lip service to the idea that they have parallel tracks for management and engineering, but the reality of it is that it takes far more success to move up the engineering ladder.
You can be one of the very best engineers in your company, or one of many hundreds of senior managers, and make the same money. If you look at how many people are at each salary level, the higher you go, the worse the ratio gets of management to engineer.
If you want to get to the highest levels of the engineering ladder, you have to be one of the most well known engineers in the world. Or be a VP. It's not easy to be a VP, but there are far more VPs out there than Distinguished Engineers.